DAY 2: Cleveland. Again.

DAY TWO: Monday, Sept. 25th - Cleveland.  Again.  NOT Effort, PA like we planned :(

After our night at the Red Roof Inn, we woke up and left the hotel around 9:30am.  We were on the hunt for the nearest auto parts store to get our camper lights in working order and then be on our way to downtown Cleveland to find some food trucks!

We easily found an O'Reilly Auto Parts store about 10 minutes from our hotel.  We bought some new lights, windshield wipers, a wire harness receiver, an emergency LED light, and some electrical tape.  We got right to work installing the new lights and crossed our fingers that they would work and we would be on our way.

Installing the new lights.

Checking out the fuse box.

After working on the camper for a while in the auto parts store parking lot, a nice man named Bill Mantle pulled in the parking lot and approached me to ask me about our camper.  He was driving by and had to stop by to see it up close.  Turns out he was a vintage camper and vintage car enthusiast and had a vintage camper that he had just re-modeled at his house down the road!  

We explained to Bill what happened with the lights and he proceeded to help us try figure out what was wrong.  We finally thought we had the problem solved, gave Bill some handshakes and hugs, and we were all on our way.

Mitch and Bill Mantle (nicest man EVER!)

As we were about to pull out of the parking lot, Mitch jumped out of the car to check the lights one last time.  Good thing he did because they stopped working AGAIN.  Bill invited us to come to his house down the street where he had tools and more space to work on the camper.  We took him up on his offer and followed him to his house.  

Bill called his neighbor, Bruce, to come over who also happened to be a camper-owner and all-around handyman.  Bruce had us back the camper into his driveway and brought out a bunch of cords, tools and various items to work on it.  Him and Bill proceeded to get under the camper and re-wire the entire thing while Mitch and I watched in awe.  These guys were honestly the most genuine and kind men you could ever meet.  It was a true god-send that they were able to help us out.  

Bill, Mitch, and Bruce.

Bill and Bruce.

Contemplation.

Hanging out with Bruce's dogs.  They did NOT like Kingsley.

Us with the guys and Bill's pristine 1950's Chevy.

YAY! The camper lights were fixed!

After Bruce offered to let us stay at us house, then gave a us one of those bag/camp chairs and some granola bars, Bill showed us his remodeled camper and we met his wife.  We thanked them all profusely and wrote their addresses down (we're still thinking of ways to compensate them for their amazing hospitality and kindness).  It was about 5pm by this time - too late to hit up any food trucks in Cleveland and too late to start making our way to Effort, PA to visit my cousins, so we decided to find a campground and call it a night.

We stopped at a grocery store and stocked up on food for the trip (finally), bought some firewood, and then stopped at Best Buy to get a mobile internet hotspot for our car.  The Best Buy salesman ASSURED us that the hotspot would work anywhere.  Once I got it set up in the car and we drove off, I immediately began doing some of my online class homework and updating our blog - until the hotspot stopped working.  Turns out, the hotspot only works in large-ish cities where there is Sprint 4G coverage - NOT in rural areas outside the city.  Effffffffff......

Homework in the car.

Feeling a little deceived by the Best Buy salesman, we made our way out of Cleveland to the Streetsboro, OH KOA campground we made a reservation at.  It was about 40 minutes southeast of where we were.  There was a Home Depot down the road from it, so we stopped and got a small space heater for the camper since it was in the 40s that night.

Campfire

Making dinner - pan fried catfish sandwiches.

Happy camper.

Streetsboro, OH KOA

Total spent on Food Trucks for Day 2: $0 :(

Spending for Day 2:

Gas: $50

O'Reilly Auto Parts: $49 (Thanks for the Visa gift card Barb and Jim!)

Best Buy for the mobile hotspot device and one months worth of 4G service: $88

Groceries for the trip: $105

KOA Campsite: $26

KOA Membership card (year membership for 10% off all stays at KOA): $24

TOTAL: $254 (over budget)

Leftover from our $6000 budget: $5520

Obviously we are now a day behind schedule.  Tomorrow we will be headed to Effort, PA (about a 6 hour drive) to visit my cousin, Britta, and her family.  We talked about driving the 30 minute drive back to downtown Cleveland in the morning to check out some food trucks, but decided not to since we were already on our route towards PA.  

Tomorrow - Effort, PA (a small town about an hour west of NYC).

Thanks for the support everyone!

XO Mitch and Laurel

DAY 1: Chicago and Cleveland

DAY ONE: Sunday, Sept. 23 - Chicago and Cleveland (or so we thought...)

Our plan was to leave at 8am, but it ended up being more like 11 since we were up til 4am STILL packing and getting everything together for the trip.  

Finally on the road - Our driver with his Marty McFly vest.

So tired but happy and excited!

The 3 of us - Laurel, Kingsley, Mitch.

(Side note, don't use 'normal' hangers in a camper.  Everything will fall off once you hit the first pothole in the road.  I will be on the hunt for those hotel-style infinity hangers that don't fall off the pole.)

Clothes everywhere.

So we were off to Chicago at 11am.  One of the rules of the road trip is that we are to go into each city blindly looking for food trucks.  No planning.  We want to see how easy or hard it is to find food trucks in each city we travel to.

We called our friend Kjersti who lives in the Chicago to meet us and help us hunt for food trucks.  We found an iPhone app called TruxMap.  This directed us to a school parking lot in an Andersonville neighborhood where there were 2 trucks parked next to a farmers market.  I put the address into my phone and found the farmers market easily.  

Chicago

Unfortunately for us, the farmers market ended at 1pm, exactly the time we arrived.  One of the food trucks - 'The Tamale Guy' - was just closing up.  He was out of food and the Chicago Bears game was apparently about to start.  Once we explained him what our food truck road trip was all about, he was super bummed that he couldn't make us any food and chatted with us for a few minutes.  We gave him the blog web address and told him to check it out.

Tamale Guy Food Truck

The other food truck that was there was called 'Gigi's Bakery' and Gigi, the owner, was selling homemade cupcakes and other desserts out of a food van.  She was so incredibly nice and was so genuinely interested in our food truck.  She even tweeted about us and took our picture!  Chicagoans - check her bakery out!  

Gigi's Bake Shop

Gigi's Menu

Here is what we ordered at Gigi's Bake Shop:

(1) Salted Caramel cupcake

(1) Pumpkin Latte cupcake

(1) Chessman's Pudding Dessert (Chessman shortbread cookies, bananas, cream cheese banana pudding, whipped cream)

$12

We also quickly walked through the farmers market to buy some produce and bread to take with us on the road.

St. Roger Abbey Bake Stand

(1) Loaf of White Bread

$4

Nichols Farm & Orchard

Various peppers

Brussels sprouts

Potatoes

Onions

Beans

$16 (we got a LOT of produce for this amount of money)

Picking out some beans at Nichols.

Total we spent on Food Trucks for Day 1:

$32 (Under budget! Yay! We set our daily budget at $40/day.)

Kjersti came and met us and we set up an impromptu picnic outside our camper on the sidewalk.  The cupcakes were amazing.  We also sliced up some tomatoes that we brought along from our home garden and ate them with the bread I bought.  So good and fresh.

Kjersti and Mitch having a cupcake picnic.

Myself and Kjersti.  Walking to Walgreens to get some necessities for the trip.

We said our good-byes and set off to Cleveland!  There was really nothing noteworthy to remember about driving through Indiana.  When we got into Ohio a few hours later, we stopped at a rest stop to make something to eat for dinner.  We sliced up some more tomatoes and bread and ate tomato, veganaise, and salt sandwiches for dinner.  Boring, I know, but we didn't have time to do any grocery shopping before we left Wisconsin.  

Rest stop in Ohio.

Tomato sandwiches for dinner.

Sunset behind us.

Our plan was to get to Cleveland around 9pm and stay at Mitch's friend Johnny's house.  Johnny is a chef who owns 2 restaurants in the Cleveland area.  Then we would plan to check out the food truck scene in the morning.  When we were just west of Cleveland, we got pulled over by a sate trooper.  Turns out our camper brake and turn signal lights were working, but the regular running lights were not.  The cop was super nice and told us to take the next exit to check everything out.  We thought we got it fixed, but then they stopped working again.  Damn this old trailer.  

By this time it was late and it was pouring rain out, we decided to stay the night where we were.   Since there were NO campgrounds within 10 miles of where we were and we didn't want to risk driving without running lights, we stopped at Red Roof Inn (dog-friendly!) in Westlake, OH for the night.  Not exactly the road trip camping adventure we were hoping for on our first night, but we didn't really have a choice.

So after a somewhat successful food truck road trip earlier in the day in Chicago, and a not-so-successful food truck road trip late in the day, we went to bed and dreamt of all the glorious food truck food we would discover in Cleveland the next morning - after getting our camper lights fixed first of course.

Spending for Day 1:

Gas: $98

Food truck food: $32

Walgreens (Thanks for the gift card Mike Besson!) for ice, bananas, dog treats, water, batteries: $24

Red Roof Inn: $72

TOTAL:  $226 (whoops...a tad over our budget)

Leftover from out $6000 budget: $5,774

More tomorrow!

XOXO Mitch and Laurel

Day Before Our Departure...

Saturday, September 22nd, 2012

Hi all!

We started this blog for anyone who is interested in following our 30 day adventure road trip throughout the entire US.  Our mission is simple:  Eat at food trucks, learn as much as we can about food trucks, travel to as many possible US cities as we can in 30 days, and to have the time of our lives!  

Back in March 2012, we spent an entire day driving around looking at real estate trying to find a house to buy that could eventually become our 'home'.  As we lay in bed talking that night, we really started discussing what we wanted for our future.  I was a student and worked full-time as a graphic designer and bartender.  Mitch, an accomplished chef in Milwaukee, who worked 75 hours a week.  Were we going to stay in Milwaukee, happy and content, with a comfortable income, amazing friends, and near Mitch's parents?  Would we buy a house in Door County, the wonderful place I grew up in 3 hours north of Milwaukee, where we got married the year before, and where my parents live?  

OR would we look outside our comfort zone and move 'away'?  

The answer was easier for us than we thought it would be.  Mitch had dreams of working for himself, owning a food truck and catering company.  I had dreams of living somewhere 'exotic'....probably subconsciously taking a cue from my little brother who has lived in Alaska and Australia, and who was now on his way to living in New Zealand.  I always knew Mitch was meant for greatness, but that there was always so much more to learn about his craft.

But this meant moving.  Farther than nearer.  

We discussed different cities.  We knew we wanted to stay in the US for now, so that narrowed our options.  When we discussed Austin, a place Mitch had been to but I hadn't, he knew it would be a great match for us.  The next day we began our research and picked a final moving date.  We gave ourselves 6 months to the day to make our plans, get our finances in order, and plan our move.  

A few months before our departure date, we decided we wanted to explore the food truck business more.  We wanted to go to as many food trucks as we could before opening our own.  What better way to do this then to take a road trip through the entire country in search of the best food trucks out there?  We knew it would take a lot of planning, money, and at a least a month to do so, but we also knew it would be a trip of a lifetime!  

We began hunting for a older camper trailer that we could fix up and take on our journey.  We found one about mid-summer and couldn't wait to get started on it.  It was a 15' long, 7' wide, 1963 Pathfinder aluminum camper.   It was the most horrible looking thing I've ever seen, but we saw the potential and knew it could look amazing.  Our parents were skeptical, but we were so excited.

Exterior of our gem.

Excited!

Interior (Back) with the cupboards scattered on the floor.

Interior (Front) with the awesome original couch.

Pathfinder camper - Made in Spencer, WI!

Also, there was a dead bird in the corner when we bought it...

Here were some inspirational campers we wanted to model our camper after :

The first thing we did was get a Home Depot credit card.  Bad idea.  We went to Home Depot so many times in a 2 month period that we knew most of the workers at our local store by name and they knew our entire road trip/camper story and probably thought we were insane.

Showing off my sawing skills at Home Depot.

Lucky for us, Mitch's parents, who live about a half hour outside of Milwaukee, let us keep the camper in their driveway.  This was a huge help to us!  We gutted it, tore out the walls, added new walls, re-wired the entire thing, painted the interior and exterior, built seats over the tire wells, got brand new tires, installed cupboards, a counter, and a sink, and decorated it.

Pre-restoration front of camper - parked at Mike and Debi's house.

Side

Back

Inside - cleaned out and ready for demolition.

Mitch and I didn't agree on everything the entire process.  We fought.  I cried.  We laughed.  We often got drunk sitting in it wondering what the hell we got ourselves into.  

The camper 'cried' too...

Mitch's parents would come out and check on us every once in a while.  The neighbors popped in to see what all the commotion was about it.  We had power tools and the shop-vac going at all hours of the night, which, surprisingly, no one complained about.

Most of all, we had so much fun.  Probably the most fun I've ever had doing anything in my life.  We decided to model our camper after the ship in the Bill Murray movie 'The Life Aquatic' which is Mitch's favorite movie.  We even named the camper 'Belafonte' which was the name of the ship.

The process took a little less than 2 months.  We set a deadline of September 14th so we could unveil it at our Going Away party.  We literally worked on it up until 2 hours before the party.

Here was the entire process from Day One....

We picked up the camper in Janesville, WI (about an hour away from Milwaukee) and attempted our first gas station stop.  From there we drove it to Mitch's parents house and got right to work.

Mitch removing the rotted wood panels.

Removing the rotted insulation.

Removing the cupboard doors.

Beginning to build the wheel well frames and eventual seating area.

Painting the interior white.

Re-wiring the camper and installing new break lights with the help of Mitch's dad and friend, Scott.

Took a trip to the grossest salvage yard EVER to find spare 'parts'... No luck.

Installing the floor and building the seats over the wheel wells.

Beer break.

New floor and walls.

Newly painted blue cupboard doors.

New tires at Tires Plus in Delafield, WI.  These guys were awesome!

Painting the cabinets blue that I found on Craigslist for $10 TOTAL.

Scathaine Metal shop in Milwaukee helped us cut our "counter top" (a solid wood door I scored for $5 at the Habitat for Humanity store!!) to fit the width of the camper and they also cut out a hole out for the sink to fit in.  These guys were SO nice and helpful.

Seeing it all come together FINALLY.

The futon we ordered FIT! Thank god.

Hand and power washed the outside so it would be ready for paint.

Painting the first exterior coat of white.  It turned out great!

We jumped the gun and painted the blue layer of paint on late in the day right before the temperature dropped into the 40s and it started raining!

When we woke up the next day, that's when the camper looked like it was crying.  We nearly started crying too...  Luckily it dried and we were able to re-paint the blue section.

Counter top fit too!  This was a huge relief.

Almost final 'kitchen' area.

Homemade curtains.  Decor.  Finishing touches for the unveiling at our party.

Almost final sleeping and sitting area.  We added a clothes bar and hangers too.

So happy and relieved to be almost done.

Cork board map (to track our road trip stops) that has a flat screen TV installed above it (not pictured) :)

Made it to the Going Away Party on-time to unveil the camper! 

We hand-painted 'Belafonte' on the side, added an anchor decal to the door window, installed white trim to the bottom edges, and added a yellow accent strip to finish the exterior.

Now it's September 22nd and we are leaving on our road trip tomorrow morning.  When we set this date, it seemed so far off.  Now it's here.  The anticipation and excitement has built so much that I almost don't even know if this is really happening.  

Once we return from our road trip at the end of October, we will spend a few days with our parents and friends before trekking back to Austin and settling in to our new life.  I will update the blog daily, sometimes more than once a day, so we can share this road trip adventure with you.

Yesterday we had a photo shoot with the amazing Katie Donoghue, our neighbor and professional photographer.  Here is a preview of the shoot with some pictures Mitch's brother took with his phone that I edited.  We are so excited to see the final pictures that Katie took!  More to come....

Here is a list of the cities we will be visiting and the dates we will be there:

Day 1 - Sept. 23:  Chicago and Cleveland
Day 2 - Sept. 24:  Effort, PA to visit and stay with Laurel's cousin, Britta, and her family.
Day 3 - Sept. 25:  Hamden, CT to visit Mitch's old boss and chef, Tom.
Day 4 - Sept. 26:  Seaside Heights, NJ, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Richmond, VA, and Virginia Beach, VA.
Day 5 - Sept. 27:  Myrtle Beach, SC, Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA.
Day 6 - 13 -- Sept. 28 - Oct. 5:  Orlando and Bonita Beach, FL.  We will be staying in Bonita for a week in our friend, Scott's, condo that he gifted to us as a wedding gift.
Day 13 - Oct. 5:  Morriston, FL to visit and stay with another one of Laurel's cousins, Marianne, and her family.
Day 14 - Oct. 6:  Tampa, Mobile, AL, Biloxi, MS, and New Orleans.
Day 15 - 18 -- Oct 7 - 10:  Baton Rouge, LA, Houston, and Austin, TX.  We will stay in Austin for 3 nights with our friends Colin and Dusty.
Day 18 - Oct. 10:  Las Cruces, NM and Tucson, AZ.
Day 19 - Oct. 11:  San Diego
Day 20 - Oct. 12:  Oceanside, Venice, and Santa Barbara, CA.
Day 21 - Oct. 13:  San Francisco, Napa and Humboldt County, CA.
Day 22 - Oct. 14:  Eugene, OR
Day 23 - Oct. 15:  Portland, OR
Day 24 - 26 -- October 16 - 18:  Seattle, WA.  Stay with our friends, Krista & Ryan, who live in Mukilteo, WA for 2 nights.
Day 26 - Oct. 18:  Boise, ID and Salt Lake City.
Day 27 - 30 -- Oct. 19 - 22:  Breckenridge, CO to stay with Mitch's brother and cousin for 2 nights.
Day 30 - Oct. 23:  Kansas City and St. Louis, MO.

Rules of the road trip:

*We can ONLY eat at food trucks, food stands, street vendors or farmers markets.  We will purchase food and beverages prior to leaving that we will bring along to eat and drink on the road or while camping/staying at the condo.
*Always order something new and different that is popular to the region we are in.
*No ordering drinks at food trucks (to save $) unless it is something popular to the region we're in that we've never tried before.
*Keep all receipts and literature so we can document everything.
*Stop at regional landmarks as much as possible, especially if we've never been there before.
*Follow the food truck food daily budget, gas budget, campground budget, and incidentals budget spending no more than $6000 total for the entire trip.
* HAVE THE TIME OF OUR LIVES!

Thank you all for your support!  

XOXO 

Mitch and Laurel